


What's Left of It

by michals



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Family Dynamics, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Regret, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-31 23:57:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18324575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michals/pseuds/michals
Summary: Post Ragnorak, fun with Loki's emotions and many mood swings.-Loki first felt it when he heard his mother had died. Like a knife had been shoved into his heart and started hollowing it out. But it was only a piece and he filled the empty space with more rage and hatred.It hadn't worked.





	What's Left of It

**Author's Note:**

> I think I wrote this right out of the theater after seeing Ragnorak and I kept forgetting it existed except that I'd run across it every couple months. Figured I might as well throw it out into the world. Just Loki being conflicted and sad and being mad about being sad. What a dork.

Loki first felt it when he heard his mother had died. Like a knife had been shoved into his heart and started hollowing it out. But it was only a piece and he filled the empty space with more rage and hatred.

  
It hadn't worked. He wanted it to bloom into an almighty and righteous anger but in the end he found it only felt like sorrow. "Sentiment" he had said once, with venom in his voice, but it was that sentiment that found him dying on an alien world with his brother sobbing over him.

  
"I didn't do it for him."

  
He tells himself it was a moment of weakness. Had his mother not been murdered he wouldn't have given in to such sappy nonsense. When he returned to Asgard and upended the throne, banished Odin to a slum of a Midgardian nursing home and took his place at the helm he felt it thrum through his bones like a fury satiated. Like a fire burning in the darkness finally ready to whither everything in its path.

  
That hadn't really worked either. Once he had the throne he didn't feel the same desire to raze and conquer like he had only years before. For this he blames Thanos, that mighty warlord and evil bastard. Sure it was Loki's thirst for power that put him at Thanos's feet in the first place, but to be crushed under the boot of a true unforgiving ruler - that fire got shoved squarely back into the darkness. Nothing kills the dream of conqueror like being conquered by someone way better at it than you are.

  
So he wanders the hall of the palace at night, finds all the places he used to haunt. Thumbs through the books in the library, looks at the stars through the trees in the courtyard, sits at his mother's mirror and delicately picks up each comb and bracelet. He even, eventually, goes to his old room, and Thor's old room, and realizes that for all his dawdling and resistance that they are just that: rooms. His brother's room is empty, only scraps and trinkets left and his own is even more barren.

  
The hollow space in his heart aches. He never thought that once everyone was gone he wouldn't be deliriously happy.

  
Being Odin does, however, have its fair share of amusements. He enjoys turning the imposing king into a indulgent sort of Dionysus. His people are confused but Loki revels in every questioningly quirked brow. It's not quite the compensation for his mental anguish but it sure is fun.

  
It's bewildering then when another piece of his heart crumbles away with Odin on that Norwiegian cliffside. "My sons". What an infuriating tyrant, what a deceiving, vicious old despot. But Loki doesn't even feel a swell of hatred at his death, it's more like he's been tricked into being sad about the damn man. And he's gone, slipped away from Loki's life as easily as his mother.

  
He and Thor don't even have a full minute to grieve when things turn to shit again. Down the road he decides he doesn't need to mourn Hela, the sister they never knew. Hard to feel any kinship with a sibling whose introduction was basically an attempted murder. And besides she's not _his_ blood.

  
He's in Sakaar for two weeks by himself. After the flurry of his landing, befriending the Grandmaster and gaining favor among the ranks of his sycophants, he at last has a moment to sit and let it wash over him. Odin is dead. Truly this time, none of that Odinsleep bullshit. The void in his chest pulses again. It was not his intention when he sent him off to Midgard - which surprises him. The old fool was still around, just not nearby. Eating applesauce and muttering nonsense to other old fools.

  
Both his parents, those he knew as his parents, were dead. And he wants to tell himself he could not have done anything to stop it, either time, but he knows - in his heart - that's not true.  
The first night that Thor is on Sakaar Loki has an idle thought that he stole his father from him. How many times had he let him think Loki was dead only to be alive? And now he'd done the opposite, convinced him his father was alive when he was dying.

  
The thought sends such a vicious stab of regret and revulsion at its absolute sentimentality that he screws up his face in surprise and makes a disgusted noise. Beside him at the grand buffet table the Grandmaster gives him a look of utter confusion. He laughs it off like he just doesn't like the food and banishes all thoughts like that as far as he can with a stiff glass of whatever the Grandmaster's drinking that makes it feel like he's swallowed a flaming arrow.

  
"I thought the world of you".

  
That bastard, that ridiculous storming ape. The knife in his chest twists and desperate faraway thoughts, buried long ago, spring up shouting _'don't hate me, don't leave brother'_. He'd thrown those feelings away in the darkness too the second he made that pact with the Joten. He'd tried to turn them under his heel again and again only to have them spring up at the worst moments. Atop a tower in New York, on a dusty plain in the dark world, at the tears in his eyes under the Bifrost when Loki let go...

  
_'Don't give up on me'._

  
Well, if he can't be angry (why can't he be angry dammit?) he can at least get even. Betraying Thor is like a well worn shoe, it fits perfectly and goes on so easily. But somewhere along the way his blasted brother must have sold his soul for a couple extra brain cells and alas, it's another of Loki's plans that just doesn't work out.

  
Thor goes, and leaves him behind, again. And he steals a ship and he goes to Asgard and sure he can tell himself round and round that this isn't about Thor, that he doesn't actually care but he is exhausted by how bad he's gotten at lying to himself so he doesn't even try. He plans a course for Asgard and tells his new band of merry rebels that they're going to go try and take down the goddess of death. Not a lot of cheers for that announcement but Loki isn't a total pushover so at least this goes his way.

  
Destroying Asgard is like watching Odin slip away into dust on a cosmic scale.

  
Ragnarok is as tremendous and awesome as the tales they were always told as children. Even from the ship Loki can pinpoint the spots in the garden where they heard those stories and watch them go up in flame and smoke. It almost bends him in double to feel its death fully. His home, his heart tells him, his home is gone. And he'd had a hand in its extinction.

  
He feels this alone, like he has everything else. He doesn't slip up to the bridge with the survivors, the rebels, and his brother. He can't let Thor see him like this, can't believe there's anything to see at all. The place of his betrayed youth, his imprisonment, his embarrassment and the place where his darkness was born and flourished. And it's no more.

  
There is no Asgard. There is no Odin, or Frigga.

  
But there is Thor.

  
"I'm here," he says and Gods what has he become? The part of him that takes the blame for the Tesseract, for the Odin-guise, for the Destroyer, and all the violence and hatred screams in agony and fury. But it's a part that's falling away into the darkness, a voice that gets quieter and quieter as Loki's world gets smaller.

  
Thor doesn't hug like he used to, like a big brother with more muscles than brains, all laughter and joy. He takes Loki into his arms like Loki might again turn out to be fake, like he might just disappear and Loki regrets so much so quickly. How foolish he was to think he'd felt all this alone. Thor's home is gone, his father and mother too. From one end of the universe to the other they only have each other now.

  
Ahead of them lies ever more hardship. Their people - their - have no home, and might have nowhere to go. Thor is a king now, something Loki fought so viciously against and it took the very kingdom's destruction to actually bring it about. What else can Loki do? He could run, sure, he could hide away like before - but knowing that his family was out there, somewhere, won't be enough this time. He wants to be here, with Thor, and he wants to stop pretending like it wouldn't hurt otherwise.

  
_'Don't give up on me_ ' the other part of him surges forward and he wraps his arms around Thor and holds tight. Thor pauses as if surprised and embraces him harder and in Loki's ear he hears a soft laugh.

  
"You aren't going to stab me, are you?"

  
"Fool," is all Loki can muster and puts his head on Thor's shoulder. Loki's heart is nearly empty but what piece he has left belongs only to him.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
